Townhall.com Chuck Colson May 16, 2006
A few months ago, I told you about the agonizing choice facing Catholic Charities of Boston: Either serve the needy or remain faithful to Catholic teaching. Specifically, the only way it could continue to handle adoptions according to Massachusetts law was to include same-sex couples among its clientele.
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute Samantha Singson May 5, 2006
A new law may force nations in the European Union to accept same-sex unions from other nations. The European Free Movement Directive entered into legal force last week and it requires EU member states to grant residency to homosexuals who are not citizens if their partner is a citizen of an EU country.
New York Times David D. Kirkpatrick April 23, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 23 — About 50 prominent religious leaders, including seven Roman Catholic cardinals and about a half-dozen archbishops, have signed a petition in support of a constitutional amendment blocking same-sex marriage.
The Most Rev’d Peter Akinola is the Archbishop and Primate of Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion
THE CHURCH of Nigeria is an Evangelical Church. It upholds the authority of scripture and is unreservedly committed to mission and evangelism that results in conversion of people to the Lord, church-planting and the caring ministry. In this Church, we teach about the total depravity of man and his absolute need for salvation through faith in Jesus the Christ. For us, therefore, adherence to scripture is not only paramount, it is also non-negotiable. In matters of faith and practice, scripture provides sufficient warrant for what is considered right and what is judged to be wrong.
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Boston Globe Raphael Lewis, Globe Staff | May 4, 2005
The Massachusetts Democratic Party is poised next week to add an endorsement of gay marriage to its platform, despite a nationwide backlash against same-sex marriage that led voters to approve bans in 11 states last fall.
Philip W. Johnston, the state Democratic Party chairman, said yesterday that the party’s 3,000 delegates will consider the platform change May 14, three days before the first anniversary of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. State Democratic parties in Iowa and Colorado added endorsements of same-sex marriage to their platforms last year.
If approved by the party delegates, the new addition to the Democratic Party’s platform will read: ”We affirm our commitment to the Massachusetts constitutional guarantee to same-sex marriage, and all of its rights, privileges, and obligations, and reject any attempt to weaken or revoke those rights.”
David Frum wites on the National Review blog:
Seven years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I conducted a fierce debate in Slate about same-sex marriage. Along the way, I hazarded this prediction:
“Andrew, three years after we permit gay marriage, it will be illegal for schools to send home printed forms with one blank for the mother’s name and one blank for the father’s.”
Did I say three years? In Canada, it’s taken barely one.
In the province of Ontario, the words “wife,” “husband,” “widow,” and “widower” are now all to be stricken from the law. The words “mother” and “father” cannot be far behind.
Ontario’s action is a reminder that same-sex marriage is not just the extension of an existing legal status to previously excluded persons. Same-sex marriage is a revolution in the definition of marriage for everyone – a revolution not just in law, but in consciousnessness.
And one effect of this revolution – and for many proponents, one of the revolution’s aims – is to make forever unthinkable the idea that husbands and wives each have special duties to one another, and that a husband’s duties to his wife – while equally binding and equally supreme – are not the same as a wife’s duties to her husband.
Once we lose that knowledge, we lose the basic grammar of marriage. It is one more reminder that in the same-sex marriage debate, we are debating not marriage’s change – but marriage’s overthrow.
From London Telegraph Online:
The Church of England is to grant partners of homosexual clergy who have registered under the Government’s new civil partnership scheme the same pension rights as clergy spouses.
The disclosure, made at the General Synod last night, could prove an embarrassment to the bishops because sexually active homosexuals are theoretically barred from the priesthood.
Only a few homosexual clergy have so far risked facing censure by publicly declaring that they are living in same-sex unions, but the prospect of gaining pension rights for their partners may prove an incentive for many more to “come out”.
The bishops plan to issue a letter for the guidance of clergy and others before the Act comes into force.
From Christianity Today website. Noted by Jennifer Roback Morse on her website The Marriage Revolution.
By practicing what it preaches on marriage, the church could transform society.
A Christianity Today editorial | posted 08/27/2003
Same-sex marriage makes perfect sense–if you buy North American culture’s take on sex and marriage. More than four decades after the introduction of the Pill, hardly anyone now getting married remembers the time when pleasure, procreation, passion, companionship, and parenthood were all intimately knotted into a bundle called marriage. Without those connections, marriage has become an arena for mere self-fulfillment and sexual expression. Even the Ontario Court, in its June 10 affirmation of same-sex marriage, could describe marriage as only an expression of love and commitment. If that is all there is to marriage, why not grant the same legal benefits to committed same-sex couples as to married heterosexuals?
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By KEVIN McGILL
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Louisiana voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment Saturday banning same-sex marriages and civil unions, one of up to 12 such measures on the ballot around the country this year.
With 99 percent of precincts reporting, the amendment was winning approval with 78 percent of the vote, and support for it was evident statewide. Only in New Orleans, home to a politically strong gay community, was the race relatively close, and even there the amendment was winning passage. Turnout statewide appeared to be about 27 percent of Louisiana’s 2.8 million voters, somewhat low for a state election.
Read the entire article on the My Way website.